Flood on car deck sank Egyptian ferry: report

An officer from the Egyptian ferry which sank in the Red Sea said today the car deck had flooded as crew battled a fire.

About 800 people are still missing from the ferry Al Salam 98, which caught fire on Thursday on a trip from Duba in Saudi Arabia to Safaga on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea.

Rescuers have brought ashore some 400 survivors and 195 dead bodies.

Another seven people were rescued on Saturday evening, the state news agency MENA said. Search operations continued today but the chances of finding more survivors were diminishing, officials said.

Rani Kamal, third officer on the ship, told the Arabic news channel Al Arabiya from a Saudi hospital the car deck had flooded during the firefighting operation, making the ship list. Government officials said earlier the blaze began in a vehicle.

"The ferry sank due to firefighting operations. Water flooded the garage (car deck), which is where the fire started, and it pooled on one side," he said.

"Then the water increased and increased until the ship listed sharply. It listed five, then 10 degrees and then 15 and then 25 degrees and that was the beginning of the end," added Mr Kamal, who was rescued from a dinghy by Saudi coastguards.

He did not explain further. Passengers have also reported both a fire below decks and serious listing.

The captain of the ship, Sayed Omar, is unaccounted for. The second officer, who has been rescued, has spoken to the authorities but not to the media.

Passengers accused the captain and crew of negligence, saying the captain abandoned the ship before making sure all the passengers had left the vessel. They said crew prevented them from wearing lifejackets and did not get them into lifeboats.

Egyptian media and commentators have accused the operators of making the ferry unsafe by adding extra decks after buying it from Italy and using a Panamanian flag to avoid safety requirements.

Owners defend safety record

The owners of the ferry, the Cairo-based el Salam Maritime Transport Company, said in a statement the ferry complied with all international safety regulations and was certified to work in European waters.

It said the ferry had gone to Genoa in Italy for the world summit in 2001 and to France and Greece in 2002.

"As for the accident complications, it is quite early to determine the actual causes as all the authorities and company officers now are mainly concerned with the rescue operations as first priority," the statement added.

The big questions are why the captain and crew did not send out a distress signal to shore stations and why they do not appear to have evacuated the ship in good time. Survivors say the fire burned for several hours before the ferry sank.

Hussein el-Harmil, head of Egypt's maritime safety board, said there had been ample time to organise an evacuation.

"There could have been a fire and loss of communications or poor management by those dealing with the fire and by the captain, leading to hurried actions which could have led to the sinking of this ferry," he told Egyptian television.

Major-General Mahfouz Taha, head of the Red Sea Ports Authority, told the television that the Panamanian flag did not exempt the ferry company from safety regulations.

He confirmed that the first the authorities heard of a possible problem aboard the Al Salam 98 was when the ferry did not turn up in Safaga on time on Friday morning.

At Safaga port, hundreds of relatives of the missing awaited news, some for a third day. Authorities deployed more riot police after clashes on Saturday between police and people angry at receiving so little information.

On Sunday morning, some of the relatives chanted at the police:"Down with the interior ministry, down with Mubarak."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited some of the injured on Saturday and made a short televised speech of condolences.

Ashraf Mohamed, one of those waiting for relatives, said: "There are officials on television but are there any here? No."